was aimed at Lord Clive's honour and fortune. India affairs, though not
in general very popular, or much attended to, engaged, at that time,
a large share of the public attention. Violent discussions were going
on in the Court of Proprietors, and in the Court of Directors, which
were not only at war with each other, but divided within themselves:
the East India Company complained loudly of the Ministry, which did
not fail to recriminate; two Parliamentary Committees (the Select
Committee, and the Committee of Secresy,) were sitting at the same
time on the Company's affairs, and often occupied with nearly the same
questions; petitions from the Company, the City of London, and the
Proprietors, were daily presented to Parliament on Indian affairs;
the events of the preceding fifteen years were reviewed, and brought
before the public, by men influenced by every sentiment of public good
and personal animosity; and many were violently agitated by all the
passions that the love of gain, the fear of ruin, ambition, honour,
public spirit, or private malevolence, can put in motion.
When, in this general turmoil, the acts of almost every man who had
filled any conspicuous situation in India were passed in review, and
commented on with all the virulence of party spirit, it is not to be
imagined that one who had acted so eminent a part in the events of
the East, and who had taken so active a share in those at home, as
Lord Clive had done, should escape without reproach. No man, from his
situation, had made more enemies; and they were not only powerful and
rich, but able and persevering. The combined force of so many passions
in angry commotion, and seeking for vent in one direction or another,
seemed all at once to be turned against him. It appeared as if he were
singled out as the political scape-goat of Indian criminality, to bear
the crimes of others as well as his own faults.
The first attack came from the Select Committee, which had directed
its attention much more to inquiries into particular historical
facts, and charges of a personal nature, than to those general views
which could enable Parliament, situated as it was, and pressed by the
exigencies and clamours of a sinking Company, to legislate speedily,
and with proper information. Lord Clive, in a letter of the 25th March,
1773, to General Wedderburn (the brother of the Solicitor-General),
who then commanded at Bombay, and who, in the November following, fell
at the siege of Broach, universally beloved and lamented, gives his
opinion of the situation of affairs, and of the proceedings of the
Committees, as they appeared to him, while things were still going on
and unconcluded. "I know not what to say," he observes, "in my defence,
for having thus long neglected to answer your several letters, so full
in themselves of matter and of the situation of affairs, both at Bombay
and upon the Continent. The real truth is, that the Parliamentary
appointment of a Select Committee to inquire into the state, nature,
and condition of the Company's affairs, and which hitherto hath been
chiefly an inquiry into the conduct of your very humble servant, took
up so much of my time and attention that I could not bring myself to
think upon any other subject. This session the inquiry has been resumed
by another Committee, called the Secret Committee, with much more
serious attention, and with much greater abilities; so that I think a
remedy may at last be applied to the many increasing evils in every
part of India, if Government will stand forth, and do what they ought
to do upon the occasion. No man is more capable than your brother of
communicating to you what is at present in agitation, and what are most
likely to be the consequences. For my part, I have ever been of opinion
that all reformation abroad, until a thorough reformation takes place
at home, can only be temporary, and must in the end prove futile. If
we cannot have an able, honest, and independent Court of Directors at
home, and a Governor and Council-General abroad of the same stamp,
there is no salvation for the Company, and we shall at last be drove to
the dreadful alternative of either seeing the whole of our possessions
fall into the hands of Government, or of our inveterate enemies the
French; and if the Proprietors have not virtue enough among them to
make a proper choice, Parliament must do it for them; and I hope the
choice will be such as may do honour to their country, and real service
to the Company."
After the appointment of the Secret Committee, the attendance of the
members of the Select Committee began to relax. Some became tired of
the business, and others stayed away, disliking the personal and
inquisitorial turn latterly given to their proceedings. Nearly a year,
accordingly, intervenes between the dates of their second and third
reports. It seems that Colonel Burgoyne, Governor Johnstone, Mr.
Ongley, and Mr. Strachey, continued regular in their attendance; but it
was with much difficulty, even during the sitting of Parliament, that
seven members could be collected, without which the Committee could
not sit. Still, however, the Chairman persevered; and various reports,
several of them containing matter of great importance, were finally
prepared.
The Secret Committee had been chiefly named by the Ministry. It had
in its number several men of business, who, not being prompted by any
personal resentments, and desirous of avoiding the reproaches thrown
upon the first Committee, proceeded to scrutinise the actual state of
the Company's concerns, so as to afford to the House data, so much
required for coming to a conclusion regarding the real condition and
solvency of the Company, and the general management of its affairs
at home and abroad. The Minister was anxious, from the labours of
the two, to be able to discover some principles for the guidance of
the Company's affairs, and to enable the Government to satisfy the
country. The questions had become very complicated, and numerous
individuals were implicated. The Attorney-General, Thurlow, undertook
to peruse the papers during the Easter holidays, and to lay before the
Minister the propositions that might result from them. A consultation,
to which were called the chief ministerial members who had taken an
active part in India affairs, was afterwards held at the Minister's
house. The Solicitor-General, Wedderburn, who was known to be Lord
Clive's personal friend, was not invited. The proposition made by the
Attorney-General, after considering the papers, is said to have been,
that Parliament should confiscate to the public all the sums acquired
by English public servants in the East Indies, under the denomination
of presents from the Indian Princes, as having been obtained by the
military force of this country, and, therefore, belonging to the
State. This sweeping proposition, which confounded different times
and circumstances, startled the meeting. Some of them observed, that
no distinction was made between presents received before and after
they were prohibited; that some had been received as the reward of
signal meritorious services, and enjoyed for a long series of years,
without any claim having been made upon them either by the State or
the Company; and that, even as to those for whom such favourable
distinctions could not be made, to deprive them, to their ruin, of
property that had been long and quietly enjoyed, would be considered
as harsh and revolting. The surly lawyer declared that, upon mature
consideration, he had not been able to form any other proposition, and
the consultation broke up.[189] It seems, however, to have been on this
proposition, that Colonel Burgoyne grounded his subsequent motion.
It is obvious that committees constituted like the two in question,
however industrious, and however impartial, must, from their
composition, be liable to occasional errors; and before proceeding
farther, it may be remarked that, in the course of their proceedings,
several such did accordingly occur. The India House, from which their
principal materials were to be derived, was under an influence most
hostile to Lord Clive and his interests; and official men best know
how easy it is to give a particular turn or colour even to official
documents or accounts. Lord North, in his speech of March 23, 1773,
remarked, that persons concerned in keeping the Company's accounts
were such expert arithmeticians, that they were acquainted with the
twofold manner of ciphering; in consequence of which it was apparent
that there was such a thing as a twofold method of stating accounts.
And Mr. Sulivan himself[190], in the same debate, acknowledged that the
statement made by the Secret and Select Committees, of the state of the
Company's affairs, was in several respects erroneous. One of the most
glaring errors of fact is to be found in the Third Report of the Select
Committee, where Lord Clive is represented as having got his jaghire at
the period of the revolution in favour of Meer Jaffier[191], though in
reality it was not granted for two years afterwards; a very important
difference. Another instance may be given. The Secret Committee, in one
of their Reports, stated that Lord Clive and his Council had paid away
a large sum of money to individuals, under the head of Donation-money,
in direct contradiction to an express order of the Court of Directors
issued long before. On the publication of this statement, Lord Clive
at once showed that it was erroneous; and that the order had been sent
by the Falmouth, which was wrecked, and the packet lost; and that a
duplicate did not reach Bengal till a considerable time after the
payment had been made. These facts it accidentally happened that he was
able to prove from the records of the India House. But assertions,
even where unfounded, do not always admit of being disproved so
satisfactorily, or even at all.
From this and some other articles misreported in a similar way, the
partiality of the Secret Committee seemed liable to suspicion. From
this imputation they were, however, exculpated by Mr. Jenkinson,
afterwards Lord Liverpool, a member of the Committee, who informed the
House, that, as the Committee had found it impossible themselves to
search for facts among the vast mass of papers at the India House, they
had been under the necessity of confiding in the diligence and accuracy
of the clerks in the several departments; and that, for the matter then
in debate, they had trusted to Mr. Samuel Wilks, the examiner of India
correspondence, who appeared to them to be a man of extreme caution and
industry.
The error in question was one that might have escaped Mr. Wilks
quite unintentionally; but it is to be feared that all the errors
or misrepresentations were not of the same description: and the
circumstances to be stated, may prove what unseen yet formidable
difficulties Lord Clive and all who were opposed to the Directors had
to contend with, where the effect of a passing, incorrect assertion
contained in a single line, was often not to be destroyed, if at all,
by long and painful representations of the real circumstances.
On the 3d of May, when Lord North moved for leave to bring in his
Bill for the better management of the East India Company, Lord Clive
solicited the indulgence of the House, while he explained a few
facts which had been partially stated in the Reports of the Select
Committee. While he defended his own character, he did not spare Lord
North nor the Court of Directors. He complained in particular of the
mean and dishonest artifices which had been resorted to by some of
the Directors to blast his honest fame, and that through the agency
of the Committee then sitting. That one gentleman, a member of that
House, who had long been the principal manager of the affairs of the
East India Company[192], had on the seventh day of November last, in a
private conversation with Mr. Hoole, the Auditor-General, told him that
he wished for his assistance in a matter that would be particularly
serviceable, and desired that he would draw up a complete state of the
civil and military charges of Bengal, and likewise the revenues from
the time of Lord Clive's arrival in Bengal in 1765; and directed him to
refer to all the letters, plans, or regulations of Lord Clive, noting
how far the charges, revenues, &c. agreed with them; to trace out the
causes of any increase or decrease; to draw up the whole historically
and progressively, making all the accounts _his own_; and, as Mr.
Sulivan expressed himself, _to mark the man_; concluding that he wished
to show that all the distresses of the Company arose from _him_. Lord
Clive reminded the House with what caution materials drawn up in such
a spirit, and issuing from such a source, were to be received; and how
easily, by the effect of so powerful an engine, any man's reputation
could be destroyed.
Mr. Sulivan rose in his own vindication, and acknowledged the
circumstance to be true; but said, that as Lord Clive had taken
occasion in the House, last session, to impute the distresses of
the Company to the Directors, he thought he, as a Director, was
justified in endeavouring to turn the tables, and lay the blame upon
his Lordship, which he had been in hopes of doing fairly, with the
assistance of Mr. Hoole. He then expatiated upon the enmity which
had long been maintained against him by Lord Clive; and to show
that it had not been reciprocal, he would now, he said, divulge a
circumstance highly injurious to the noble Lord's honour, and which
he had industriously concealed from the Secret Committee: this was
the suppression of sixteen months' correspondence which had passed
during his first government of Bengal, and which, though repeatedly
called for by the Directors, had never been produced: that it was
believed that the letters so suppressed might set the business of the
jaghire in a different light from any in which it had yet appeared.
Lord Clive, immediately rising, stated the facts. The correspondence
with Indian Princes is always carried on by the Governor only; and
translations are kept in books transmitted to the Directors from time
to time. Some portion of it, written in the year 1759, by some accident
had been neglected to be sent home. In 1763, when Lord Clive filed a
bill against the Company for recovering his jaghire, the Directors
(suspecting that the missing letters might contain something of
importance, and had therefore been withheld) called on him to produce
them, as it was presumed that he had retained copies for himself of
his correspondence. In answer, he acquainted the Court that he had
delivered the sections in question to Mr. Campbell, a Scotch author,
in the year 1760, in order to prepare a memorial concerning the Dutch
affairs to be laid before Mr. Pitt, then Secretary of State: that since
then he had not seen them, though he had in vain made every inquiry
after them; but that, from his own knowledge, he could affirm they did
not contain any thing that could affect the matter in dispute between
him and the Company.
To this statement Mr. Sulivan, of course, might give only such credit
as he was disposed; but, as it happened, some account of the debate
having appeared in the public newspapers, Dr. Campbell wrote to inform
Lord Clive that he had found the sections mentioned by Mr. Sulivan,
and was ready to deliver them to his Lordship's order. They were
accordingly recovered next day, and immediately sent to the Court of
Directors, and were found not to have the smallest reference to the
jaghire.
But though Lord Clive had it in his power to meet and answer thus
speedily these reflections upon his character, it is very evident that
this good fortune was partly owing to accident; and that, in many
similar instances, the most honourable and the most cautious of men
might have found it altogether impossible to explain, at the moment,
or at all, charges thus brought against them, at the distance of many
years, when the minute circumstances had dropped from their memory,
when documents had been mislaid or lost, or witnesses had fallen under
the stroke of death. Several persons, whose acts were alluded to in
the various reports, complained bitterly of this, as well as that the
injury was not known till it had become in some measure irreparable by
publication.
At length the storm which had so long been gathering against Lord
Clive in the Select Committee, burst upon his head. The Committee
had taken a historical view of the whole incidents, military and
political, that had occurred in Bengal for seventeen years before;
and Lord Clive and most of the chief agents who had been engaged in
them had been repeatedly examined. Colonel Burgoyne, who, on the 8th
and 21st of April, had brought up the Third and Fourth Reports of the
Committee, called the attention of the House to them on the 10th of
May[193], and, after alluding to the disagreeable situation in which
he was placed, declared that the Reports contained an account of crimes
shocking to human nature; that all the disasters that had befallen
the Company and their affairs in the East could be traced back to the
dethronement of Suraj-u-Dowlah, and the establishment of Meer Jaffier;
a revolution, he said, effected by the blackest perfidy. He dwelt upon
the circumstances of that event, in which Lord Clive took the leading
part; the fictitious treaty by which Omichund was induced to desert
his master; the forging, as he alleged, of Admiral Watson's name to
that treaty, when the Admiral himself refused to subscribe it; the
subsequent agreement with Meer Jaffier, and the immense sums received
by the Select Committee of Calcutta, and others of the principal
agents, under the name of presents or donations, but which, being, as
he asserted, extorted by the influence of military force, did, like
all acquisitions by treaty with foreign powers, of right belong to the
State. He also attacked the proceedings of General Caillaud and others;
and after expatiating on the enormities which the Reports had brought
to light, he concluded by moving the following resolutions:--"1. That
all acquisitions made under the influence of a military force, or
by treaty with foreign Princes, do of right belong to the State. 2.
That to appropriate acquisitions so made to the private emolument of
persons entrusted with any civil or military power of the State, is
illegal. 3. That very great sums of money and other valuable property
have been acquired in Bengal, from Princes and others of that country,
by persons entrusted with the military and civil powers of the State,
by means of such powers, which sums of money and valuable property have
been appropriated to the private use of such persons."
Colonel Burgoyne intimated to the House that, if these resolutions
met with their approbation, he would not stop there, but would follow
them up with vigour; and that his object was to compel such as had
acquired sums of money in the way alluded to, to make full and complete
restitution to the public.
The motion was seconded by Sir William Meredith; who said that there
were only two possible ways to bring about a reformation in the East
Indies,--the one by law, the other by example. That as to law, he
could not comprehend how it was practicable to enforce laws made at
such a distance: that the constitution of the present government
of Bengal was defined to be a union of the sovereign and merchant;
and that Mr. Vansittart explained what was the law by which these
merchant-sovereigns exercised their supreme power: their rule of
selling was to take as much as they pleased, while the rule by which
they bought was to pay as little as they pleased. That the evils
complained of were to be corrected not by law only, but by example; and
deplored the stain brought upon the British name by the transactions
which the Reports before the House disclosed.
Mr. Wedderburn answered, at considerable length, the principal
assertions of the speakers that preceded him; and showed the
incompetency of the evidence on which some of the facts rested, and
the erroneous and unjust conclusions that had been drawn from others,
so far as concerned Lord Clive. As to the forgery of Admiral Watson's
name to the treaty with Omichund (he continued), it would be needless
to analyse it, because the noble Lord has declared that, had it been
necessary, he himself readily would have done it, and certainly done
right in politics, to take that or any other means to destroy in an
enemy so great a tyrant. He concluded by saying, that the resolutions
before the House were founded in envy and illiberal principles; they
were narrow, pointed at individuals, and neglecting future reformation,
which ought to be the grand object of the inquiry; and above all, that
there was in the Reports an indecision and defect of evidence that must
render every thing done on their authority arbitrary and illegal. Mr.
Attorney-General Thurlow defended the resolutions, and answered Mr.
Wedderburn's speech.
In the course of the debate Lord Clive rose, and defended himself with
great dignity and force. He pointed out the mistakes in matters of
fact in the Reports, and in the speeches founded on them. He took a
review of his own public life and services, and especially of that part
of them that had been brought into question. He claimed the rewards
and the honours bestowed on him as justly his due; lamented the abuse
that had been made of the public press, and the mode resorted to of
slandering the character of all orders of men without distinction: that
for his part, he had been called villain, scoundrel, thief, murderer,
assassin, &c.; but that he need not complain, as even Majesty itself
had not escaped this implacable fury. What he regretted was the cause
of virtue and public spirit, which must inevitably suffer, if this
abuse was permitted to go unpunished; since the greatest inducement to
men of superior talent to stand forth and distinguish themselves in
their country's cause, was the hope of fair fame and just applause.
Having explained the circumstances of the revolution, so far as he
was concerned, and defended the legality of all the presents he had
received, both in point of law and of justice, and alluded to the
honours he had received for the very acts now questioned, he concluded
by saying, "If the record of my services at the India House, if the
defence I have twice made in this House, and if the approbation I have
already met with, is not an answer to the attack that has been made
upon me, I certainly can make none."
The two first resolutions passed without a division; and the third was
also carried, though after some opposition.